Ample work in political communication showed that high-level politicians get more media attention than their lower ranking colleagues. With power comes media attention. More than hard work, charisma, or experience, it is the political function performed by politicians that is the crucial factor in explaining how much media attention they receive. But what about the opposite relationship: does media attention also generate power? In this paper, we examine the media path leading to power. Basically, two important career steps of politicians are assessed: becoming a party leader and becoming a minister; we test whether, compared to those who did not make a top career, the politicians who came to take these steps were more prominent in the media before they moved up and became elite politicians. We draw on the case of Belgium here and leverage on a longitudinal automated media content analysis (2000–2020) combined with a data set of 532 national/regional politicians and their careers. The study finds that media occurrences matters for being promoted to a top function in Belgium, more so for becoming a minister than for becoming a party leader. Furthermore, rejecting our initial idea based on political mediatization theories, the influence of media occurrence does not seem to increase through time for both functions.

政治传播方面的大量工作表明，高层政治家比低级别同事获得更多媒体关注。权力带来媒体关注。除了努力工作、魅力或经验之外，政治家所执行的政治职能是解释他们获得多少媒体关注的关键因素。但相反的关系呢：媒体关注也能产生力量吗？在本文中，我们考察了通向权力的媒体路径。基本上，评估政治家的两个重要职业步骤：成为党的领袖和成为部长；我们测试，与那些没有成为顶级职业的政客相比，采取这些措施的政客在晋升成为精英政客之前是否在媒体上更为突出。我们在这里借鉴了比利时的案例，并利用纵向自动化媒体内容分析（2000-2020）结合 532 位国家/地区政治家及其职业的数据集。研究发现，媒体事件对于被提升为比利时的最高职能很重要，对于成为部长比成为党的领袖更重要。此外，拒绝我们基于政治中介化理论的最初想法，媒体发生的影响似乎并没有随着时间的推移而增加。